Here are some things I thought I knew about my marriage and my self:

1. As a couple that lives on a boat in the Caribbean for most of the year and owns no home on land, we have no need for a motor vehicle, and no place to keep one if we had one.
2. As “old” folks on Social Security, the time has passed when tent camping is an option – sleeping on the hard ground and stumbling around in the dark for the inevitable nighttime visit to the toilet.

And yet, as we prepared to head from Bismarck, ND, to the extreme northeastern corner of Minnesota to visit Jon Ringen — old friend, former undergraduate schoolmate, former fraternity brother, and former college roommate in an off-campus rented house – and his wife Cathie, Barb and I did something extraordinary.  We bought an automobile.  And not just any automobile, but the very same 1999 Toyota Camry that Mom had owned until we talked her into ceasing driving back in 2008 or so.  She had given the car to her grandson and my nephew Erik, who had used it for a number of years before upgrading to something newer.  He was just about to sell the Camry when we appeared for our latest visit to Bismarck and so we bought it, thinking that it would be a solution to the problem of getting to Minnesota and Colorado and Arizona, a subset of our planned destinations during our 2014 visit to the USA.

“Why not camp on those trips?” Barb asked.  Once Barb gets an idea, she is not easily dissuaded, and so we bought sleeping bags and an inflatable queen mattress and an inflator and a ground tarp and a cooler and two small pillows.  Bismarck niece Cathy and her husband Jon loaned us their tent.  The plan was to spend two days getting to the Ringen’s cabin on McFarland Lake, MN, camping the first night along the way at Itasca State Park, MN.  That would give us time to stop on the first day at the Chase Lake Nat’l Wildlife Refuge, near Carrington, ND.  The Refuge is in the heart of the Prairie Pothole region that cuts a swath in the middle of the state, in the tallest and most rugged part of the Coteau, a geological formation that holds some of the highest density of wetlands in the nation.  In particular, Chase Lake hosts the largest nesting white pelican colony in the USA.  Barb, no fool, had realized that if she wanted to talk me into camping, a good inducement would be to suggest that we spend a lot of time in areas where I could do some bird photography.

We stopped in nearby Medina for breakfast and to visit an unmanned information room dedicated to birding and Chase Lake.  Using pamphlets we obtained there, we headed out on gravel roads to the lake.  The first suggested route had us encountering huge trucks on a narrow road that surprisingly dead-ended at a huge gravel works where large machines were creating material for road improvement.   We backtracked and two miles south took a second suggested road that would take us adjacent to a small lake on the way to Chase.  Alas, the road soon deteriorated into a two-track path overgrown with weeds that slapped the front of the car and made nasty noises as they scraped the bottom.  Much to Barb’s dismay, I proceeded.  Or at least attempted to proceed.  When we crested a small hill we could see that our track ran straight into the small adjoining lake.  Were we on the wrong track?  Nope.  Officially a semi-arid State, North Dakota has for the last decade or so gotten an unusual amount of rain, and our small lake had filled to the point that our track was flooded.  I stepped out of the car and could see white pelicans on distant shores, but they were too far away for photographs.  While Barb held her hands to her head and moaned, I pulled a “moonshiner turnaround” and we backtracked again to a real gravel road that could take us back to a highway and on our way to our Itasca destination.  We arrived in time to visit the headwaters of the mighty Mississippi and settle into a peaceful campsite.

Next day, we arrived about mid-afternoon at the cabin of Jon & Cathie Ringen, located on an overlook of Lake McFarland, about a mile east of Pine Lake, one of the easternmost lakes of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA).  “Cabin” doesn’t do the dwelling justice.  After years of addition and enhancement, the place has most of the comforts and conveniences (and capacity) of urban homes, lacking only land-line power and telephone, deficiencies addressed by solar power and cellular communication, the latter of which is available only by virtue of their height above the lake, an advantage not enjoyed by most of their lake neighbors.

For the entire visit we had marvelous weather which we took advantage of by hiking and canoeing and sunning on the deck.  We ate like royalty and drank like sailors.  I probably spent too much time attempting to convince them that it is time to retire from professorships and enjoy the benefits of additional leisure, including the opportunity to visit us on the boat more often.  One afternoon we attended a potluck for the residents of the lake, an annual event organized by the Ringens and a lovely neighbor named Jessica.  On our last full day with the Ringens, we all travelled up to the Rendezvous Days at Grand Portage National Monument where scads of French trader re-enactors were camping.  In an arena adjacent to the National Monument, the Grand Portage Band of Minnesota Chippewa was holding a traditional Pow Wow, scheduled each year during the same weekend as the Rendezvous.

We had a great visit with the Ringens – we hope they will come see us soon.  The breadth of their hospitality is illustrated by their beneficence as we left:  they gifted us with a spare camping stove, cook kit, and hexagonal tent so large as to accommodate folding seats in addition to our mattress and so tall as to permit us to stand erect when inside!  As if that wasn’t enough, Jon waterproofed the seams of the tent before we left.

When Barb posted something about our visit on Facebook, we got a nice surprise.  Former cruising friends Ann and John (Livin’ the Dream), who have temporarily swallowed the anchor and are living in Punta Gorda, FL, saw the post and wrote to say that they were going to be canoeing in the BWCA.  They finished their weekend excursion just as we finished our visit to Lake McFarland, and so we met them for lunch in Grand Marais as we headed back toward Bismarck and they returned to Minneapolis, where John was doing some consulting.  So great to visit with them again.

We stopped that night (Aug. 11) and camped at the Savanna (no “h”!) Portage State Park near McGregor, MN, using our new tent, stove and cook kit.  Next day we drove to the Arrowwood Nat’l Wildlife Refuge, located on the James River north of Jamestown, ND.  There, we had much better luck at getting close to white pelicans.  I also photographed a yellow warbler and a Baltimore Oriole.  We then continued to the little town of Pettibone, to camp at a place Barb had found on the net. She had called a listed number, and learned that they did indeed have a small campground, complete with water and electricity. When we arrived, all we could see was a park that shared its space with a fire station.  Asking at a small grocery store, we learned that the park was indeed the campground.  Further, the toilets and showers were accessible via a side door to the fire station.  The camping fee was $5 for no power and $10 if using the power.  Donations were requested for using the spotless showers.  The town had one café, but served only breakfasts and lunches.  However, one of the two bars served warmed-up frozen pizza, and that is what we had for supper.  Next morning after a breakfast at the café of delicious caramel rolls and eggs over easy, we backtracked a bit to once again try the Chase Refuge, circling to approach from the north.  This time, we succeeded in getting to the shores of Chase Lake, but saw only a few distant birds.  Undaunted we continued on back roads all the way back to Bismarck, enjoying the countryside and the many birds along the way.

Our “headquarters” up to this point has been in Bismarck, but we have said little about that aspect of our visit.   We will remedy that situation in our next post, when we will discuss what we have been doing when we weren’t off someplace else.  Stay tuned!